LITTLE ROCK, AR – In a unanimous decision cheered by child welfare advocates
nationwide, the Arkansas Supreme Court today struck down a regulation that
banned lesbian and gay people from serving as foster parents. The decision
ends a seven-year legal battle by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Pointing to the findings of a lower court that overturned the ban, the Court
criticized the Child Welfare Agency Review Board’s reasons for enacting the
regulation, writing, “These facts demonstrate that there is no correlation
between the health, welfare, and safety of foster children and the blanket
exclusion of any individual who is a homosexual or who resides in a household
with a homosexual.” The Court went on to say that the state’s argument to
the contrary “flies in the face” of the scientific evidence about the
suitability of lesbian and gay people as foster parents. The Court added
that “the driving force behind adoption of the regulation was not to promote the
health, safety, and welfare of foster children, but rather based upon the
Board’s view of morality and its bias against homosexuals.”

“The Arkansas Supreme Court clearly understood what social scientists and
every respected child welfare organization have been saying for years: There is
no reason to deprive children of good homes by excluding lesbian and gay people
from serving as foster parents,” said Rita Sklar, Executive Director of the ACLU
of Arkansas. “We have a shortage of foster homes in Arkansas, especially for
teenagers and sibling groups. Thanks to today's ruling, Arkansas' foster
children have a better chance of finding loving homes.”

The lawsuit challenged a state regulation that banned gay people and anyone
living in a household with a gay adult from being foster parents and was filed
against the state in 1999. Several prominent child welfare groups took an
interest in the case, with friend-of-the-court briefs being submitted by
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, the Child Welfare League of
America, the National Association of Social Workers and its Arkansas chapter,
the American Psychological Association and its Arkansas chapter, and the Evan B.
Donaldson Adoption Institute. These groups urged the court to strike down
the exclusion because it works against the best interests of foster
children.

“This is a wonderful day for the foster children of Arkansas because it means
that more stable, loving homes will be available to them,” said Jim Harper,
L.C.S.W., L.M.F.T., a Little Rock social worker who works with abused children
and their families. “Social science research has consistently shown that
gay people are just as able as straight people to provide safe, nurturing homes
and their children are just as well-adjusted as anyone else's children.
This ban was never about protecting children's best interests, and it's
wonderful that it's been struck down.”

Arkansas’s Child Welfare Agency Review Board established a policy in 1999
that “no person may serve as a foster parent if any adult member of that
person’s household is a homosexual.” That same year, the ACLU filed a
lawsuit challenging the policy on behalf of a lesbian from Fayetteville, a gay
couple from Little Rock, and a heterosexual man from Waldron whose gay son
sometimes lives at home. All of them want to serve as foster parents but
are automatically disqualified from doing so by the ban.

“There is already a rigorous individualized screening procedure in place that
ensures that only those who can provide a safe, stable, healthy home are
approved as foster parents,” said Leslie Cooper, a senior staff attorney for the
ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project, who argued the case before the
court. “Today’s ruling means that gay people will go through the same screening
process as any other applicants, rather than be automatically rejected no matter
how qualified they are.”

Cooper and James Esseks of the ACLU’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender
Project and ACLU of Arkansas cooperating attorney John Burnett represent the
prospective foster parents.

In its decision in Howard v. Child Welfare Agency Review Board
unanimously striking down the state regulation banning gay people and people
with gay adults living in their homes from serving as foster parents, the
Arkansas Supreme Court cited the following findings of fact based on the
scientific evidence presented at the trial court:

Children of lesbian and gay parents are just as well-adjusted as
children of heterosexual parents.

Being raised by gay parents doesn’t increase the risk of
psychological, behavioral, academic, gender identity, or any other sort of
adjustment problems.

Being raised by gay parents doesn’t prevent children from forming
healthy relationships with their peers and others.

There is no factual basis for saying that gay parents might be less
able to guide their children through adolescence than heterosexual parents.

There is no evidence that gay people, as a group, are more likely to
engage in domestic violence or sexual abuse than heterosexual people.

The state allowed gay people to serve as foster parents in Arkansas
before the ban and does not know of any child whose health, safety, or welfare
have ever been endangered by living with lesbian and gay foster parents.

The exclusion of gay people and people with gay family members may be
harmful to children because it excludes a pool of effective foster parents.